Men may get head start on Alzheimer's treatment, study says

by Sandee LaMotte, CNN

Updated 6:14 PM ET, Wed March 16, 2016

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How to keep your brain healthy – Scientists have learned more about the brain in the past 10 years than in all other time periods combined. Take a look at these discoveries to see how to improve your memory and boost your mental power.

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Use your vacation days – Brains think more clearly when we're not overworking ourselves. By taking a break from work, you'll experience more "Aha" moments, since you're not using your brain to focus on endless tasks that lie ahead or dwelling on events that occurred in the past. But using your vacation for relaxation and not catching up on work is the key to mentally recharging.

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Don't miss out on sleep – Sleep helps the brain consolidate memories and clear out waste. Lack of sleep can affect your reaction time, your memory and how well you process information. Chronic sleep loss can put you at risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke and speed up the aging process.

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Avoid intense multitasking – It's actually impossible to do several different things at once, and multitasking isn't good for the brain (PDF). It decreases mental performance and makes us worse at getting anything done. Focus on one task at a time, and take breaks. If you must take on more than one task, make sure you pair a task that requires less thinking with one that doesn't require as much, such as doing laundry while paying bills.

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Get enough vitamin D – Recently it's been discovered that vitamin D can help support brain health, especially in seniors. People with low vitamin D levels experience more cognitive decline than those with normal levels. The vitamin also supports healthy blood vessel function and the growth and survival of neurons.

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Drink green tea – Tea has been around for 5,000 years, but new research suggests that drinking green tea can improve attention span and boost your brain for mentally challenging tasks. The caffeine in the beverage can also help with memory recall and processing.

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Challenge yourself – Exercising your mind with activities other than traditional "brain games" is a great way to build and maintain brain power. Working on a challenging new skill can give your brain a boost, or even changing your routine to stimulate learning through novelty.

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Read more fiction – Fiction novels might improve brain functions in several ways. A small study found that when you are engrossed in a novel, brain connectivity and function are enhanced. The neural changes that occur in the brain when reading put the reader into another person's shoes, and as a result, story comprehension improves.

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Story highlights

Women keep verbal memory longer than men

Tests for cognitive decline are not sensitive enough and women are not being treated early

Early diagnosis helps slow progression of disease

(CNN)If you're a woman who has just been diagnosed with mild cognitive decline or Alzheimer's, you might have missed out on years of treatment that could have slowed your disease progression. That's the takeaway from a new study that compared how men and women with varying stages of memory loss respond to verbal learning tests, a key method for diagnosing Alzheimer's and other memory disorders.

"The female advantage in verbal memory may allow women to maintain normal cognitive function for longer as the disease progresses," said study author Erin Sundermann of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "And that female advantage may help to mask a true mild cognitive impairment diagnosis in women."

"The finding may be due to the fact that the cognitive tests used are less sensitive to early decline in women and may miss the earliest stages of deterioration," said Mount Sinai Professor Mary Sano, who wrote an accompanying editorial for the study.

For reasons science doesn't fully understand, women traditionally perform better than men on verbal memory tests. But this study looked at whether that gender difference might be affecting how early a woman is diagnosed with memory loss — and therefore treated.

"Early diagnosis offers better planning opportunities, allows a patient to make choices for themselves while they can, and can put support systems in place earlier," said Sano, who directs Mount Sinai's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. "That is also the best point at which to target current, as well as experimental, therapeutics."

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That's critically important, added Sundermann, because "these interventions seem to be most effective when given at earlier stages of impairment. Thus, the currently available drugs may stand a better chance of slowing progression in women if we can diagnose women at an earlier disease state."

The study looked at 235 patients with an Alzheimer's or dementia diagnosis and compared them to 694 patients with mild cognitive impairment and 379 healthy participants, analyzing both their test results and the size of their hippocampus. The hippocampus is the organ in the brain most responsible for memory; in Alzheimer's it shrinks as the disease progresses.

Not only did women outperform men overall on verbal memory, they continued to do so when their hippocampus was shrunken. Most important, by the time women showed signs of memory impairment, the size of their hippocampus was significantly smaller than a man's. Sundermann believes that might lead to a worse prognosis for women than men.

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"Our overarching theory is that once cognitive decline begins, it will occur more rapidly in women compared to men because the disease is more advanced at that point," said Sundermann. "In order to more definitively test this, we need to track individuals' verbal memory performance and brain size across time from the disease stage of normal, to Alzheimer's-type dementia."

While further research is underway, say the authors, there are important changes that could be made to today's diagnostic tools.

"I think we need to rethink our screening and assessment tools to be sure they are equally sensitive to men and women," said Sano. "Better tests could be more sensitive memory tests or other cognitive tests that are more difficult."

"Alternately, in women it might be particularly important to consider self-reported cognitive change, which may precede the change in formal testing," added Sano.